All change at the EMJ….

The New Year brings many changes to the EMJ. Not only do we have a new cover, we have a new editorial team too. For the last 7 years Geoff Hughes and Kevin Mackway-Jones have developed the EMJ into a scientific journal with real impact across the emergency medicine and pre-hospital care communities. They have done an amazing job for the EMJ and its readers and although they have handed over the reigns of the journal they will still be around to manage the ever popular commentaries and BestBets sections.

Ellen Weber takes over as the Editor. This will be the first time that the EMJ is solely edited by a non-UK physician reflecting the international reach and aspirations for the journal. Ellen is an emergency medicine professor at the university of California, San Fransisco and has a broad research and editorial background with interests in overcrowding, triage and our beloved 4-hour target. Ellen’s thoughts and aspirations can be read in this month’s journal with a theme running through to make the journal something for readers to value, enjoy and use. This may take some time to mould and Ellen aspires to experiment in order to get this right. Quite what those experiments will be I’m not sure, but further forays into the world of social media are certainly on the agenda.

The associate editor team has an international flavour with Terri Reynolds tackling global health (from Tanzania and the USA) and Paul Middleton covering prehospital care and resuscitation (from Sydney, Australia). Back in the UK, Mary Dawood (Emergency Nursing ) and myself (social media) complete the team.

So, it’s not just the cover that’s changed. The new look for the journal also means a new outlook for readers and authors alike. As always, we want to know what you think so keep in touch via the blog or by using our twitter feed and let us know what you think – as Ellen tells us….’The journal should be for the reader…….’.